Flourished Calligraphy Medallion Tutorial

Regardless of your calligraphy skill level, I encourage you to try making this calligraphy medallion! The trick is to take it step by step. At the end, you’ll be pleasantly surprised to see that all of the steps come together to make a gorgeous piece of art!

The other day, a friend sent me over this Instagram video of Nina Tran creating a gorgeous calligraphy medallion. Naturally, I stopped what I was doing and decided to try creating one myself. And, today, I’d like to show you how to make one, too! Just take it step by step, and you’ll be delighted as the project unfolds into dip pen gorgeousness.

1. Make Pencil Guidelines

Before you get your dip pen out, you’ll need to make pencil guidelines. Start by tracing around a medium-sized circular object. I used a spool of ribbon, but you could use the bottom of a drinking glass, a coaster, etc. Note that this first set of circle guidelines is exactly how big your calligraphy medallion will be.

The first circular guideline that you make will dictate the size of your calligraphy medallion.

Next, find a significantly smaller circular object, and trace around it in the center of the circle that you just drew. I traced the inside of a tape dispenser.

Your pencil guidelines should look like a doughnut or a CD.

Once you have traced around the smaller object, use your ruler and your pencil to draw a vertical line that divides the circles in half. Next, draw a horizontal guideline to divide the circles into fourths. Finish up by drawing “X” guidelines that further divide the circles into eighths.

Use a ruler and pencil to divide the circles into eight pieces.

As a side note, don’t fret if your pencil guidelines aren’t perfect. You can see in the photo above that my lines don’t intersect exactly in the middle of the circles. That won’t adversely affect the end result, I promise!

2. Draw Hooks and Spirals

In this portion of the instructions, words can only do so much! I’ll explain as best I can, but the best directions will come from the photos. So — here we go! Once you have drawn the pencil guidelines, get out your favorite dip pen and ink. Draw a relaxed S-shaped “hook” that starts to the right of a straight guideline, loops to the left, then ends again at the right.

Continue to draw that same “S” shaped hook along every pencil line. The hooks should end at the larger circle guideline.

The “S” shapes should feature a pronounced hook that intersects the inside circle guideline.

Now, put the point of your pen on the small circle pencil guideline between two of the “S” shaped hooks. Pull down to create a “U” shape that extends about 2/3 of the way to the large circle guideline. End the “U” between the two hooks on the other side, and loop around to gear up to draw another “U”.

Continue drawing connected “U”s around the rest of the circle until you’ve got a circular spiral.

Connect all of your “U”s with loops. It’s okay if some of the loops are more smooshed than others!

3. Draw Blades of Grass

At this point, you’ll want to draw two left-leaning blades of grass beside each “S” hook. To draw the first blade, put your nib to the right of an “S” hook, just a little bit inside the smaller pencil guideline. Start by exerting minimal pressure on the nib, then increase pressure as you pull down to make the blade of grass. The grass should be about 1/3 the length of the “S” hook. Draw a second blade of grass to the right of the first one.

Continue to draw blades of grass all the way around the circle, until your calligraphy medallion looks like this:

To draw blades of grass, start by exerting minimal pressure. As you pull down, apply more and more pressure to end with a nice, thick downstroke.

4. Draw Wheat

Now, put your nib to the right of one of the loops that connects the “U”s. Exert very little pressure on your nib, and make a line that curves to the right. The line should end at the larger circle guideline.

Make curved lines to the right of every “U” loop, until the calligraphy medallion looks like this:

These curved lines serve to fill up the negative space beside each “S” hook.

Now, use small downstrokes to draw grains of wheat along each curved line that you just drew. I generally draw five grains on each side and one at the tip. The grains should extend about halfway up the curved line.

Add grains of wheat to each curved line. At this point, take a step back to admire your progress — the calligraphy medallion is really coming along!

You can make beautiful grains of wheat by exerting very minimal pressure, then ending with a thick downstroke at the end.

5. Draw More Blades of Grass

This is the last step! Put the tip of your pen to the right of one of the springs of wheat, and draw a right-leaning blade of grass. Once you’ve drawn that, draw a slightly smaller blade of right-leaning grass beside it.

Continue drawing two blades of grass to the right of every wheat sprig in the circle.

These blades of grass should intersect the “U”s.

To finish up the calligraphy medallion, use your pen to draw a small, right-curving piece of grass in the center of every “S” hook. The grass should intersect the smaller pencil guideline.

Wait for the ink to completely dry before you erase — otherwise, it may smudge! This is Dr. Ph. Martin’s Iridescent Ink in Black Sparkle, and it took about five minutes to dry. Wait longer for white ink! An hour is ideal.

Applications for Calligraphy Medallions

In addition to being providing fantastic dip pen practice, calligraphy medallions make mail art sing! I love using it on the front of envelopes, as shown on the Flourish Formal envelope pictured below.

In addition to mail art, calligraphy medallions would make a beautiful addition to gift tags, stickers, and sketchbook pages. I heartily encourage you to try making one — they’re gorgeous and addictive! If you like making this calligraphy medallion, you’ll definitely do well with the equally intricate Not Your Average Calligraphy Drills, which also require good hand-eye coordination.

I’d like to thank Nina Tran for posting the original calligraphy medallion video on Instagram. Again, you can see that by clicking here! I believe the concept for this calligraphy medallion came from Pat Blair, so many thanks go to her as well. And — of course — thank you for reading the TPK blog! It’s always my pleasure to have you here.

15 Comments

Thank you so much for inspiring me to pick up my dip pen again after months of procrastinating. I’m very much a beginner, but I’m really happy with how the calligraphy medallion turned out. Thanks for breaking down the steps so clearly. Following this tutorial made my day and reminded me of why I wanted to take up modern calligraphy in the first place – to relieve stress, to create something beautiful, and to make myself happy. Thanks for the encouragement to continue practicing.

I love your reasons for taking up modern calligraphy! I think so many people get caught up in the technicals of it (my letters MUST be X” high, my spacing MUST be perfect, etc.), that sometimes they forget the core reasons behind learning it … which are really just quality of life sorts of reasons. 🙂

Lindsey, I just want to finally tell you how much I enjoy your blog. Seriously, it’s my absolute favorite . I have bought some of your tutorials and have loved them and you’re truly generous with the free tutorials that you provide as well. Thank you for this one on the gorgeous medallion.

Oh, I am in love with this and definitely going to give it a try. I have seen them before but never made an attempt. Now that I have your instructions, I will try this soon. Thanks so much Lindsey for this post, and have a nice weekend…….Linda E.

Long weekend here, and cold, so you can guess what I will be up to! Ink, pen, hot chocolate, tpk tutorial, I’m all set. They look awesome.
This could also make a great Christmas snowflake envelope or decoration if you divided it into six points instead of eight.

Haha, that was the intention. I was so keen to get to this I think the setup was more like brush pen, scrap paper, pajamas, breakfast cereal. Still awesome. And I did another one later with white ink on purple card. I love this tutorial. Even if you don’t get it perfect, it ends up with this cool wild floral arrangement look. And yes, today is freezing!!